[Paper presented on 19 June 1998 at the annual meeting of the World History Association, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, as part of the session "Teaching World History on a Global Scale: Computer-Mediated Distance Learning." Some of the conclusions are the result of research funded by grant #T98-023 of the SBOE's "Idaho Technology Incentive Grant Program."]
I knew that my two colleagues in this session would do a wonderful job explaining central aspects of computer-mediated distance teaching and learning, and prior to the meeting, I had distributed to interested members and posted on the Web a more general paper entitled "Virtues and Vices of Computer-Mediated Teaching and Learning." Therefore, I decided to present a less commonly- used computer application known as a MOO. A MOO has nothing to do with cows, as my title indicates, but everything to do with effective interaction between instructor and students and among the students themselves. Computer-mediated instruction is about making connections between information and people, and the MOO is an exciting spot in which to connect.
To a large extent, teaching world history involves bringing together different perspectives in dialogue as a way to reveal truth. This idea about the value of the dialogue was central to the European intellectual movement we often call Renaissance Humanism. At the annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association on 5 June, I presented a paper on the Castilian Humanist Juan Maldonado, an ecclesiastical official and teacher in the northern commercial center of Burgos, who made great contributions to the development of the dialogue form which would eventually lead to the creation of major works of narrative fiction, novels if you will, for which the Spanish Golden Age is so well known. Think particularly of Cervantes' Don Quijote de la Mancha. One of Maldonado's techniques was topothesia, the creation of descriptions of the physical environment as a way of promoting the meaning of certain types of interaction. The MOO is specifically designed to permit the creation of different types of environments within which the users can interact.
A MOO permits one to add a real time, "live" classroom experience to the computer-mediated distance learning course. I am not opposed to lectures as a teaching method, but a major restriction of computer-mediated instruction is that it does not lend itself to lecturing. Despite allowing for a "live" class, the MOO has similar restrictions. However, it provides a means to enhance substantially interaction among course participants, and it is this interaction which excites me most about computer-mediated teaching techniques. The MOO simply provides an environment for interactions much more intense and challenging than one gets with the various sorts of asynchronous forms of interaction among people more usual in computer-mediated instruction.
What is a MOO? A MOO is a multi-user, object-oriented environment developed from earlier multi-user applications, called MUDs, apparently created for playing games like "Dungeons and Dragons" on an international level. Users in the MOO can do many things that are done in the "real" world; they talk to others, look around, gesture, explore the different parts of the environment, and interact with objects they find. Many of the game-playing routines are still embedded in the software, often adding humor to the classroom. The programmer is known as a Wizard. Funnier still for students is what happens when someone is suddenly disconnected by an event like a power outage. The student's character, 'Jack' for instance, remains in the room unresponsive until all participants see on their screens the message, "The housekeeper comes and carts Jack off to bed." Oh the stories that then get told about Jack.
When, while sitting in Pocatello, Idaho, I took a graduate-level course in the fall of 1994, taught by James J. O'Donnell at the University of Pennsylvania, I discovered something about this aspect of computer-mediated learning. In part, I took O'Donnell's course on the sixth-century C.E. Roman author Boethius with the idea that the classes would provide a poor substitute for those that could be taken while physically present on a university campus. However, the thing that excites me so much about the use of the MOO is that, in general, on-line, real-time interactions are of much higher quality than those in the traditional classroom. Collaboration is greater, and participation is more equitable. Because of its design flexibility and its easy access and use, the MOO is a particularly valuable environment for such interactions. O'Donnell provides a great deal of useful information about this subject on his Web site at the URL http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/teachdemo/moo.html.
Much of the success in MOO use is due to the existence of a free helping computer program known as a "client." The most widely-used client for MUDs and MOOs is called TinyFugue, which works like a telnet client for MOO access, but then permits the user to configure his or her screen in important ways that contribute to the excitement of the class sessions. TinyFugue's developer, Ken Keys, maintains a useful Web site on his creation at the URL http://muq.org/~hawkeye/tf/. I will summarize the ways in which this client enhances the quality of class sessions in the MOO environment.
First, TinyFugue allows the student to create a full-text log of the class session on his or her own computer account. There is no need to take notes. Liberated from the note-taking responsibility, and the divided thought patterns in which note-taking students are often forced to engage, students are free to concentrate fully on the discussion, and they are always ready to jump in quickly with their own comments and queries. Moreover, these digital logs allow students later to use a wordprocessor to edit the log, perhaps inserting additional ideas or material from course readings or other digital sources. Such an edited log makes a great record on which to reflect during the preparation of course assignments and exams.
I like having the logs as well because I can review a particular class session at any time. I look for themes that got left to one side and highlight these in later asynchronous, e-mail exchanges, and I can often see ways to improve the presentation of complex data and ideas for future versions of the course.
Second, unless a participant gestures that he or she is thinking and will shortly respond, no participant can tell if someone else will intervene. Therefore, no one waits, looking around to see if others will put up a hand first. Comments and questions often come in so rapidly that the instructor has to serve as a kind of traffic cop, ordering the queries and interventions so that all of the issues raised get discussed in turn. It takes a bit of practice for instructors to adjust to this unfamiliar task, but the students quickly adapt and do not seem bothered by such confusion. Of course, they know that they have a full log which they can consult later to see any points they may have missed. During the class session itself, material never scrolls by too fast because students set a page length of 24 or 25 lines; until the command @more is given, no additional material appears on the screen.
Third, without TinyFugue, a participant's typing is frequently broken up when other participants send their interventions to the screens of others. TinyFugue allows users to create an editing box along the bottom of their screens. This keeps their typing separate from that being entered into discussion and prevents the comments of several participants from getting mixed together, which would make reading difficult or impossible. The existence of the editing box appears to be a chief contributor to the breadth and frequency of participation by students. The ability to see and edit their interventions quickly on the screen before others will see them removes the hesitation experienced by many students in a traditional classroom as they search mentally for just the right thing to say before putting up a hand, often waiting too long and finding that the discussion has gone elsewhere.
It should be noted that, particularly because of this editing feature, the transcript of an oral conversation, like the Nixon Watergate tape transcripts for instance. You do not see the partial sentences and missing ideas that emerge from the existence of a lot of shared assumptions among participants in an oral interaction when they know each other. Although the MOO interactions are not necessarily adversarial in nature, the need to write comments forces the users to be more explicit. Teaching world history often challenges deeply held shared assumptions. Students will naturally assume the meaning they already had, and these assumptions even interfere with their ability to grasp the content of lectures. The MOO sessions tend to expose quickly the assumptions that are being challenged, making it clear what is new and troubling about any information or perspective presented.
Finally, there is a growing body of evidence that computer-mediated interactions are a tremendous aid to those who are genuinely shy. With only the screen in front of them, they will often interact vigorously with others, sometimes for the first time in their lives.
I should add that there are other related aspects of a MOO environment which are important. Computer-mediated communication provides much greater opportunities for collaboration, and it is this aspect which is perhaps the most poorly developed among those using Internet resources for instruction. Instructors can work to create learning communities, and they should do so because on every college and university campus, even the virtual ones, there is a tremendous need for common, collaborative, academic experiences among students to create groups. Moreover, the same complex environment can provide on-line space for the social, instructional, and professional interactions necessary for individuals and groups from around the globe, including members of the World History Association, to cooperate on courses, grant-writing, paper discussions, to establish connections where there has only been fragmentation, communities where there has only been isolation.
The MOO is a good example of an instructional opportunity which is relatively underutilized because so much computer-mediated instruction is being driven by those fascinated with ever-more-sophisticated hardware and software rather than by the genuine educational needs of teachers and students. But to understand a MOO, it is necessary to visit one because there is no satisfactory way to introduce or explain in an article the MOO environment and its interactive possibilities. In this case, experience is the only teacher.
All contents copyright © 1998-99. J. B. Owens All rights reserved.Revised: 14 April 1999
URL: http://www.isu.edu/~owenjack/bookmarks/bovnemoo.html